About the Editor

Carlos da Silva Campos.

Professional journalist, with background on the economical press and Packaging Editor since 1982, heading independent magazines REVIPACK (packaging), REVIPLAST (plastics) and REVIPROJECT (automation).
Lawyer since 1984 and and Packaging Consultant since 1986, working for several industry associations related to packaging and recycling. Honorary Member of IPPO - the International Packaging Press Organisation. Served as Vice-President (1996-1999) and Chairman (1999-2002).

Invited by Petcore Europe and the European Federation of Bottled Waters (EFBW) to a Workshop held in Brussels on 15 March, more than 80 experts from the PET value chain, brand owners and researchers gained an insight into Polymark, a European project that has developed a new technology enabling the identification and sorting of polymers, focusing on PET as a start, in the high-value plastics waste stream.
“We believe that sensor-based sorting technologies hold a key to enabling circular economy for plastics, providing high-grade sorting and boosting recycling quality and yield. Aside from the technical progress made during the Polymark project, we have seen how the entire value chain has embraced marker-based sorting as a crucial next step in improving plastics recycling“, explained consortium partner An Vossen from EPRO in the introduction video of the Polymark project.

Peter Reinig, Group Leader Photonic Sensing from the Fraunhofer IPMS, presented the work undertaken by former HERI on the development of the chemical marker. Within Polymark a chemical food contact approved marker was identified which is used for coating on a bottle or on a label. After identification and sorting, this coated marker can be subsequently removed by existing recycling plant washing.
The focus of the second technical presentation, also presented by Reinig, was on the development of a spectral identification technology that detects the marker and decodes the information in order to separate the post-consumer plastic packaging. This Polymark detection principle for sorting is based on UV-excitation and VIS-fluorescence. It is capable of sorting food-grade PET bottles at 3 m/s conveyor belt speed with spatial resolution of 10 mm.

Finally, Hans Eder, Head of R&D at Sesotec, explained the development and functionality of the Polymark industrial scale sorting system. Its marker detection setup is built from two basic units: a high energy UV light unit for excitation of the marker and a highly sensitive camera to detect the weak fluorescence signals emitted from the marker. This Polymark sorting machine is able to achieve an output purity of 98% on the major input fraction.
After the presentations, participants – physically present in the workshop or having joined via webinar – raised a number of questions and comments. Regarding the question if this project will be further developed commercially and also potentially translate into EU policy, Casper van den Dungen, Vice-President of the Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE), stated that the Polymark project is providing a first platform for the industry to communicate on tracer technologies. The recyclers are now encouraging Europe to harmonise and standardise the use of such innovative sorting solutions. It is important to keep in mind that there are still a number of barriers, and further discussions are needed amongst all interested stakeholders. “However, Polymark marks a starting point and gives a certainty that such innovation is possible“, he concluded.
All training presentations as well as further information are publically available on the Polymark website www.polymark.org.

The international meeting MeetingPack 2017 will be held on 30 and 31 May in Valencia (Spain). It is organized by AINIA CENTRO TECNOLÓGICO and AIMPLAS and it will bring together more than 300 experts in food plastic packaging from different countries.

The event brings together the whole food packaging value chain. Big food multinationals, packaging, materials and packaging equipment manufacturers, as well as representatives of the distribution sector and other agents, such as public managers that plan the management and control policies in Europe, experts in food legislation and technologists will attend the event. Some of the companies that have already confirmed the attendance are UBE, Dow Chemical, Repsol, M&G and Danone.

This edition focuses on the topic «Convenience: Driving Barrier Packaging Innovation», where the big global technologic challenges in this field will be discussed, challenges like barrier materials, new manufacturing and packaging systems, sealable and reclosable materials, additive manufacturing, industry 4.0, sustainable packages and recycling, active packages and advances in quality test and control. To see the programm of MWEETINGPACK 2017, click HERE.

Packages, in particular with barrier material, play a current and future demand-driven key role of the convenience requirement of European consumers and the challenge of overcoming the food waste or the need of increasing the shelf life of products and the food safety.

Furthermore, it coincides with the event Made From Plastic 2017, which had more than 100 exhibitors and 3,500 visitors in its last editions.

The European Container Glass Federation (FEVE) carried out a new European glass packaging Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to benchmark industry performance against previous data published in 2009. Compared to the previous LCA study, data prove major progress has been made by the container glass industry in terms of recycled content, saving of virgin raw materials, energy consumption and emissions reduction. The study provides a very detailed and representative picture of the European industry average performance. It is not based on a cherry-picking of best-performing cases. It covers 84% or 17.5 Mtons of the Year 2012 European sold volume of packed container glass (72% in the previous study based on Year 2007 data) and 219 furnaces across Europe (205 in 2007). All glass production technologies and bottle colours have been assessed. The study was peer reviewed by a panel of LCA experts, including the chairman of the ISO TC207/SC5 Life Cycle Assessment. The full inventory of inputs and outputs for the production of an average glass bottle is available. LCA methodology helps to measure some key environmental indicators. The FEVE LCA for container glass (i.e. bottles and jars) analyses each step that goes from extraction of raw materials, to making, delivering, and disposing of the container glass. Overall, the FEVE LCA demonstrates how closed-loop recycling has a high positive impact on the sustainability of glass packaging. The LCA helps the glass industry to understand its current environmental footprint and this will act as a benchmark for future improvements.

The methodological report and Life Cycle Inventory are available for download on FEVE’s website under privileged access. To register for downloading, clich HERE.

EU 28+2 recycled 6.3m tonnes, 39.5%, of its 15.9m tonnes plastic packaging waste in 2014, easily surpassing the EU’s minimum target of 22.5%. According to EPRO, the end destinations were as follows:

Recycling: 39,5% Energy recovery: 38,5% Landfill: 22,0%

The recycling rate for plastic packaging rose from 34.7% in 2012 to 39.5% in 2014. Except for Malta, all the EU 28+ 2 countries in 2014 exceeded the EU minimum targets of 22.5% recycling. 24 countries (19 in 2012) recycled more than 30%, 12 countries even surpassed 40%. In 2014, Czech Republic ranked on the top with a recycling rate of 52.1% followed by Germany, Slovenia, Sweden and Ireland.

64% of the post-consumer plastic packaging waste is generated from households, the remaining 36%, comes from the trade/ industry segment. The recycling rate for trade and industry sector reached 42.8% (37.6% in 2012), while recycling for the households segment obtained 37.7% (33%).

The following EPRO countries include all kinds of plastic packaging in their collection schemes for households: Germany, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, either in a separate plastics fraction or together with other lightweight packaging (yellow bin). In other countries like Austria and UK, some parts of the country collect all plastic packaging while other regions concentrate on just rigid plastic packaging. Germany, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have in addition a deposit system for most of the beverage bottles. In Belgium, France and Switzerland, the EPR- systems focus on rigid plastics (bottles), but France is about to expand, step by step, the scope of the system to comprise all plastic packaging. How to sort, recycle and recover mixed streams of plastic packaging is a key topic for EPRO working groups. In addition, design for recycling is also a key issue for EPRO.

Energy recovery hit 38.5% in 2014 (34.5% in 2012). In total 78.0% (72.5%) of all plastic packaging waste was recovered in 2014, the balance going to landfills and incineration without energy recovery; 3.5m tonnes of plastic packaging ended in landfills last year.

There are still big differences on energy recovery results within Europe. Ten countries energy recovered more than 50% of their plastic packaging waste in 2014 and obtained all a total recovery rate (recycling + energy recovery) above 90%. This means that less than 10% was landfilled in these countries. At the other end of the ranking list, we find a couple of countries that still does not energy recover any plastic waste. Ten countries landfilled more than 40% of their plastic packaging waste, among them Spain with 41%.

The recycling result for packaging of 39.5% is better than for other plastic applications. The overall recycling rate for plastics reached 29.7% in 2014. While 40% of all plastic products put on the market are packaging, packaging contributes by 62% to all plastic waste generated and as much as 81% to all plastics recycled. 7.7m tonnes of plastic waste were recycled in 2014, of which 6.3m tonnes packaging. Packaging thus lift the average recycling rates for all plastics in Europe, EPRO says.

In 2014, the agriculture sector generated 1.4m tonnes of post-consumer non-packaging plastic waste. This equals 5% of all plastic waste generated within EU28+2. In 2014, 28.0% (26.4%) of this was recycled, while 31.1% (28.4 %) was energy recovered. The rest, 40.9% (45.2%) went to landfill.

An average European-wide recycling rate of 75% was achieved in 2013, 1 percentage point up from the previous year, reports APEAL, using data sources and methodology reviewed by Eunomia to measure the steel recycling.

A tonne of recycled steel saves over one and a half times its weight in CO2 emissions, over twice its weight in raw materials and uses 70% less energy than producing steel from virgin sources.

“The scrapping of the Circular Economy Package earlier this year by the EU Commission was clearly disappointing, but there are promising signs that a replacement will be announced soon that will provide ambitious recycling targets necessary for pushing Europe towards a circular economy. APEAL is confident that this is the way forward and in the meantime we will continue to concentrate our efforts in those countries where there is still potential for increased steel recycling.” – said Alexander Mohr, secretary general of APEAL

Today the design of most PET trays makes them difficult to recycle in the existing waste streams. In the future this situation can be reversed by changing the trays’ design and allow their recycling. PRE (Plastics Recylers Europe) will develop recycling guidelines specific for PET trays. In the last few years there has been a significant increase in the use of PET trays by the packaging industry. Unfortunately, this increase has not been adequately addressed in the end-of-life solutions for these trays. As a result of poor end-of-life thinking, most of these trays cannot be easily recycled. None of the current recycling streams want to have PET trays in their incoming waste. PET recyclers cannot handle them because of their different composition (multi-layers, multi-material combinations etc.) when compared to beverage bottles. Mixed plastics recyclers do not want them because of their incompatibility with polyolefins. This is a painful situation as the 700,000 tonnes of PET trays yearly put on the market should be a valuable resource for the EU. Today, these trays are not sorted out separately and are not recycled. Nonetheless, some collection schemes and sorters are trying to push trays into the PET bottles or Mixed Plastics streams in order to achieve higher recycling targets. The key factor to change this market reality is to act at the design stage of this product. Industry must evolve in order to maintain and grow the market for this packaging product. Without such a change this PET market could be replaced by more resource efficient solutions.Thus, to overcome this situation PRE will take responsibility and start developing recycling guidelines for PET trays. These first guidelines will enable the value chain to assess the recyclability of the products which are put on the market and move towards recyclable PET trays. In a second step separate sorting streams will have to be created to enable PET tray recycling. As some non-PET trays have similar issues PRE will also develop guidelines for trays made of other plastics.

Metal Packaging Europe reported 73% as the 2011 recycling rate for rigid metal consumer packaging (European average, EU 27+EFTA), with an increase 2.8 percentage points. This makes rigid metal consumer packaging the most recycled packaging in Europe, says MPE. The extra recycled tonnage of 188kt of steel packaging and aluminium beverage cans in 2011 equals an increase of 7% over 2010, resulting in a total of nearly 2.9 million tonnes of metal being recycled back into packaging or into other useful products such as building parts, automotive parts or even into bicycles. Although Metal Packaging Europe is confident that the sector will be able to meet its voluntary European average recycling target of 80% by the year 2020, there is a strong need for more collection and better sorting of packaging waste. In this respect Metal Packaging Europe would very much welcome minimum performance criteria for extended producer responsibility schemes.